Love It’s all about Poet, performer joins benefit show in daughter’s memory

POETRY is more than a profession for Lee Mallory. Although much of his writing is about love, his work also addresses themes such as the underdog struggle and life’s quirks. And since moving to Las Vegas in 2013, he’s turned poetry into a performance art, taking it to the stages of coffee houses, casinos and punk rock bars in the valley.

But on a personal level, poetry was a way to help his daughter, Misty Mallory, after she first attempted suicide more than 20 years ago and later how he It was the last day of summer in the last year of the millennium,

Lee Mallory says, that his oldest daughter died at 23. He doesn’t think that was a coincidence — summer was Misty’s favorite season. mourned her death in 1999.

“She was too smart,” says Mallory, a retired English professor and author of eight books. “She felt the joy when she

Lee Mallory shares a poem written by his daughter, Misty. ▶

felt the joy, and she could write poetry about it like her dad. But she was battling, and she felt the pain more.”

On Saturday, Mallory will joins blues rock musician Lisa Mac and a lineup of artists at the “Love Wins Again Benefit Show,” an evening of fundraising and raising awareness for Opportunity Village, a nonprofit organization that serves people with intellectual disabilities.

Mallory will be the only featured poet, and it will be for Misty when he and Mac perform.

Poetry runs deep

Mallory started writing poetry in 1968 as a student at University of California, Santa Barbara, inspired by the people he met and the events taking place in the nation. He hung out with poets such as Kenneth Rexroth

LOVE

and Charles Bukowski, adopting some of their influences in his own writing.

It would be just a pastime for years, as he was working as an English professor and raising his two daughters, Misty and Natalee, in Newport Beach, California.

Misty graduated high school at age 16 and went on to earn an associate’s degree from Orange Coast College. After his daughter’s first suicide attempt, Mallory says he encouraged her to write as she battled her demons.

“As far as I know, she didn’t write a lot of poetry initially, but she was